You would think images like this one would have endeared the Buckeyes to SEC fans.
Public Enemy No. 1, considered disarmed and undangerous. If you've been a consistent lurker around the SEC-flavored corners of the Interwebs over the past few months, you'll have noticed that should one particular non-SEC team once again have the disgusting audacity to qualify for the BCS championship game, they will, apparently, be sentenced to Hell to eat naught but burning hot coals and drink naught but burning hot cola for all eternity ... or until Vandy qualifies for a bowl game, whichever comes first.
There was always going to be some northerly-directed vitriol after the Buckeyes got pantsed a second time, but I have to say I'm surprised said vitriol has taken on quite this level of intensity. First, it's not like either set of Buckeyes were the second coming of fishily-selected 2001 Nebraska or 2003 Oklahoma--each was a clearcut No. 1 with fewer losses than any other BCS team in the country. Second, I'm afraid SEC fans can't exactly crack on the Buckeyes' schedule credentials when--sorry, guys, I know this won't be the most popular point to make--the Big 10 teams those credentials have been built upon have gone 3-1 against the SEC in their bowl games. If LSU gets credit for beating Florida at home, I think we can afford to give the Bucks a little bit of credit for beating the team that beat Florida in Florida. By all means, have a good, hearty larf at the thoroughness with which OSU soiled themselves on the big stage, but it didn't mean they didn't deserve to be there. And if they finish 2008 with fewer losses than any other BCS team in the country--again--they'll deserve to play for a crystal football--again. Sorry.
That--the possibility of the SEC champ getting the championship-game shaft in favor of another paper-tiger OSU team, even one with a better record--is, I think, the rub. I agree wholeheartedly that given the SEC's track record in BCS bowls vs. the Buckeyes', the SEC should absolutely be given the benefit of the doubt should OSU and the SEC champ finish with the same number of losses. Trust me, I'm as fervent as anyone in wanting my second-least favorite non-SEC program as far away from the BCS title game as possible. This is the same program who nearly escaped an upset bid at Wisconsin by choking the opposing quarterback out of the game, the same coach who sat the linebacker responsible for a single game. I hope they go 0-11 and Tressel winds up selling vacations at a strange travel agency that only books trips to Ann Arbor. On commission.
But hoping is not the same as expecting. What I honestly (and depressingly) expect, looking at how obscenely loaded the Buckeyes are and how obscenely mediocre the remainder of the Big 10 should be, is that they escape from L.A. with a win and cruise to the title game. Should they face an SEC team there, guess which side the Buckeye backlash will have made the prohibitive favorite--and guess which side will be hellbent on disproving two years' worth of Southern doubt, arrogance, and as we've seen, outright bile. As an SEC fan, this is a scenario that worries me.
Ironses more successful off the field than on at the moment. It's been kind of cool to see Kenny Irons become a kind of blogging cult hero since joining the Bengals--the latest exhibit in Kenny's transformation into the NFL's Gilbert Arenas waits here--but it might have been even cooler to see him become a kind of non-cult hero on the football field. As TWER pointed out, that's looking less likely these days, and David's career doesn't appear to be on an upward trajectory at the moment, either. Too bad.
To answer your question, your question is stupid. Ray Melick pulled on his official Paul Finebaum mermaid-sighting goggles and delved into the Furr situation, with the result being that the guy who by basically every account was a) not happy to make a logical position switch for the team he committed to b) openly dogging it in drills c) "bristled," let's say, when called out for said dogging d) quit immediately is now suddenly e) a sympathetic figure. Please.
We're trying to make it as hard as possible for teams not to predict what we're going to do.
Strange strategy, aiming to become so obvious your opponent will know what's coming even if they're trying not to. But it sounds good to me. (I kid. Walker misspoke, no biggie. He just needs to be a little bit more motivated about communicating clearly, and fortunately Saban's all over it.)
And finally ... I really do hate to toss another log onto the raging wildfire that is the stereotyping of the 'Bama fan, and linking from a small-time college football blog like this one to anything linked already by EDSBS is a little bit like telling the cashier at the movie theater there's a new Batman movie out ... but on the off-chance you haven't already, you really ought to read who's living in the ninth circle of fan hell.
This series of near-substanceless, air-injected preview puffery should in no way be mistaken for actual preseason football nutrition. Nonetheless, the hope is that you will find the series unaccountably tasty and even habit-forming, and as such it is unofficially sponsored by:
Yes, I am wearing my "HELLO MY NAME IS: Homer McHomerson" name tag. Yes, I'm sure I'm blissfully unaware of some rivalry in Conference USA or Oregon or someplace where they put the losers' heads on pikes and dye a seven-mile stretch of the Missouri River in the winners' colors. Yes, I am aware that making definitive statements about how things are "rated" is akin to taking careful aim before throwing a dart at the moon.
But as I wholeheartedly believe the following definitive statement anyway and believe this to be the appropriate context in which to make it, I feel compelled to state: Auburn-LSU is the most underrated college football rivalry in America.
Sounds like 99.4 percent pure Auburn Blogger bluster, I know. But there's court-admissible evidence, I swear to you. For starters, there's the two series tidbits most sea urchins (at least the ones in the Gulf of Mexico) could tell you by now: the winner has won the SEC West six out of eight years, and the last four entries have been decided by a total of .078 points (OK, it's actually 14, 13 in regulation, if you like).
But even if those indicators are a good start, they still fall well short of fully illustrating how ridiculously good this series has become. Consider, for instance, that of late the winner of this game has generally done more than simply win the SEC West. Since 2001, the Auburn-LSU winner has won two national titles and *cough* finished an additional undefeated season; is a perfect 7-0 in bowl games, including four wins in BCS bowls, two more victories on New Year's Day, and one 40-3 whipping of Miami in the Peach (none of which even counts the Sugar Bowl demolition of Notre Dame by 2006 loser LSU); has won four of seven SEC titles; has won no fewer than nine games; and has averaged a final AP ranking of 5.7th.
Consider also that since 2004 neither team, winner or loser, has finished with fewer than nine wins. In that four-season span, Auburn and LSU have combined to post an 85-18 overall record, for a winning percentage of .825. The only two rivalries in the country that come within even a handful of games of matching that particular record of quality are Texas-Oklahoma, a half-game better at 86-18 (.827), and Louisville-West Virginia, at 79-20 (.798) and declining.
It's not just that Auburn-LSU has grown into one of the most reliable collisions of college football colossi on the national schedule, though. It's also that it's the next-best-thing to impossible for another rivalry to have matched Auburn-LSU's brand of drama over its past four meetings. Speaking as someone who can't remember the last time he breathed in the fourth quarter (or overtime) of one of these things, just reciting "14 points over four games" doesn't even approach doing justice to them; they aren't the "close" games of the "Team A scores touchdown with 27 seconds remaining to pull within five and fails to recover the onside kick" variety. To wit:
2005: Neither team should let it get to overtime tied at 17--LSU drops a touchdown pass in the dying moments and Auburn outgains them by a mile--but LSU prevails because, as fans on both sides will recall forever with either giggly glee or the gnashing of teeth, this is the J**n motherhumping V****n game.
2006: The 7-3 slugfest, with the terror of Dorsey, Highsmith, and Landry on one defense and Groves, Marks, and a singularly possessed Will Herring playing the game of his life on the other. The most physically brutal game yours truly has likely ever seen.
Here comes the bluster again, but: If you can show me another rivalry that combines those kinds of Alcoa Fantastic Finishes with both the level of play these programs have achieved this decade and the steady increase in full-blown hate flowing between the Plains and the bayou, I'll gladly send you a choice selection from my fine collection of leprechaun eggs. Free of charge.
Now, to slow the hyperbole train for just one second, Auburn-LSU doesn't carry anything like the grand historical weight of Auburn-Georgia. For yours truly, at least, it won't ever come within shouting distance of the bone-deep intensity of the Iron Bowl. A sizable chunk of Auburn fans would still prefer a win over Florida. As things stand today, I'm not arguing Auburn-LSU is even the "biggest" or "best" rivalry game on Auburn's schedule, much less in the SEC or the country or anything like that.
Nonetheless: Auburn-LSU is a hell of a game. It's unquestionably one of the two or three capital-H Highlights not only of Auburn's schedule but the SEC's at-large, and deserves a spot in any national "10 games to watch" list you'd care to put together. The 2008 version has a lot to live up to--but looking back at the last few years and with only 45 blessed days between now and then, it's hard to find any reason to believe it won't.
Last year: Maybe you heard, but LSU had quite the eventful season last year: the merciless slaughter of Virginia Tech, the fourth-down-a-thon against Florida, a death-defying escape against Auburn, slip-ups against Kentucky and Arkansas, and finally a nice hatful of redemption against the bumbling Buckeyes. I'm not sure that by the end of the year LSU was entirely deserving of their reputation as a Stihl-endowed great ape so memorably portrayed thusly:
but 12-2 and a crystal football sure ain't bad.
Meanwhile, behind a frightfully green-but-improving offensive line, Auburn rebounded from early upset losses to South Florida and Mississippi St. to upset top-five Florida on the road, take eventual national champion LSU to the wire, and stretch their school-record Iron Bowl winning streak to six on their way to a satisfying 9-4 final record.
Notable previous meeting: LSU tradition states that the Bayou Bengals will score one touchdown for every roar live mascot Mike the Tiger unleashes in his pregame appearance before the LSU crowd. So it was more than little unsettling for the Tiger faithful when, before hosting Auburn in the third week of the 1993 season, Mike was wheeled onto the field and failed to offer so much as a soft growl during his entire "performance." He instead sat meekly in one corner of the cage and despite the best efforts by the costumed "Mascot Mike" and his handlers to rouse him, Mike gave no response other than to stand briefly, take a single wobbly step, and lay down again. True to form, the LSU offense under Curley Hallman provided little enthusiasm or energy of its own as Terry Bowden's visiting Tigers ran away with a 34-10 victory that would help springboard them into a perfect 11-0 season.
With the veterinary students in charge of Mike's care reporting immediately after his visit to the stadium that he appeared "glassy-eyed" and "unusually sluggish," a toxicology report was administered and came back with surprising results: although he would make a full and routine recovery before the end of the evening, Mike had been given a mild sedative by unknown persons sometime in the three-to-four hours before the game.
An internal investigation by campus law enforcement failed to produce any viable suspects and the case remained closed until its 10-year anniversary in 2003, when a typed message bearing the official letterhead of the Auburn College of Veterinary Medicine arrived in Baton Rouge. The letter had been signed by "Dr. Gideon V. Wainright" and "Dr. Brown V. Boardofeducation" and claimed that while vet students at Auburn, the pair had been responsible for slipping a tranquilizer into Mike's food. "Bowden's boys may not have needed the help," the letter read, "but we thought we'd do what we could anyway. War Eagle!" Attempts by law enforcement to identify the authors of the letter proved unsuccessful. Although the letter made no indication of any future attempts to sedate Mike a second time, the handling of his food and medical care have since come under dramatically increased scrutiny from the LSU administration, resulting in substantially stricter guidelines regarding security and access to the animal.
Actual series history: The important recent stuff is covered above, though it's probably worth noting--as if neither you nor the aforementioned sea urchins didn't already know--that the home team has won the last eight in the series. LSU leads the all-time series 22-19-1.
Causes for Alarm
1. The argument I've heard most often from the Auburn fans and Auburn-backing media predicting an Auburn win in this game doesn't have much to do with Auburn itself, actually. It goes, simply: Auburn's the home team. Even the occasional LSU fan is following the meme.
This troubles me, not necessarily because it's a faulty argument in and of itself--I mean, eight-out-of-eight is a pretty good track record, even when the margins have been so ridiculously slim of late--but because of the unsettling resemblance between this line of thinking and the consensus amongst the Auburn faithful (the JCCW most certainly included) ahead of the Tigers' date at Athens last November: We'll be fine. We own the Dawgs in Athens. One 45-20 bludgeoning later, I'm a little less high on expecting the Jordan-Hare Stadium genie to pop out and grant Auburn a win when Tubby rubs his glasses on the hem of his shirt.
I'm not saying home-field advantage doesn't matter, mind you, not saying I don't like Auburn's odds on the Plains a metric ton better than I would if they were headed to Baton Rouge again. But I worry that expecting a victory because of the field the players are playing on as opposed to what the, you know, players do is asking the football gods to teach us (and a few media types taking the lazy way out) a second lesson.
2. Look, there's no need to pretend that watching a 5-foot-5-inch Olympic-quality sprinter do things on a football field like this:
isn't awesome, damn him.
Causes for Confidence
1. Seriously, who wears purple in football? The Northwesterns of the college world, the Minnesota Vikings of the professional world. (you don't think zero Super Bowl titles in 42 years is an accident, do you?)
Yes, I know it's a Cajun thing, and sure, things have been swell this decade. But there's a reason the Tigers were cursed with Mike Archer, Curley Hallman, and Gerry DiNardo for back-to-back-to-back regimes and wallowed in mediocrity like a pig in slop for so many years--all despite lying smack in the middle of one of the country's most fertile recruiting areas. And that reason is that purple is not an appropriate color for football uniforms, unless you somehow believe Tulane hanging with LSU for a half last year somehow wasn't related to this.
2. I touched on this briefly earlier this week, but the pendulum of luck seems to swing more violently between Auburn and LSU than between any two other teams I can think of. 2004: LSU misses their lone extra point while Auburn controversially gets two cracks at theirs. 2005: V****n. 2006: Auburn gets the (right, if debatable) call on the big late fourth down. 2007: Not only does Miles's (intelligent) end-of-gamble pay off, but the officials also return the 2006 favor when they pick up an illegal formation flag on an LSU touchdown based on replay.
Whether the officials will have as noticeable a role in this year's game is TBD (let's hope not, as fans from bothsides could do more to let the zebras' decisions go), but the pendulum is due to swing away from the visitors in some fashion or another. And not just in terms of this particular matchup, either--LSU finished an unreal (and unsustainable) plus-20 in turnover margin in 2007.
Actual alleged analysis: Frankly, save the one great big giant glaring neon-lit EXCEPTION, it's hard to point out where exactly on paper Auburn has an advantage on LSU. Our defensive line should be nigh-unstoppable terrors; unfortunately LSU's got one of the most experienced, best o-lines in the league. But hey, our o-line returns all five guys and should be pretty special, too; too bad LSU has the consensus best d-line in the country. In Williams, Scott, Holliday, and others, they have nearly as many strong and explosive running backs as we've got strong and explosive linebackers. Their corners might be unproven, but it's debatable how stiffly Smith, Dunn and our unproven receivers will challenge them. And particularly now that Aairon Savage is done for the year, I don't even want to think about Demetrius Byrd, Brandon LaFell, Richard Dickson, Terrance Tolliver, and the rest of that flock of freaks lining up against our nickel and dime corners. I'm getting the shakes. Let's just move on.
Namely, to the one place Auburn can claim an advantage: LSU's quarterback situation. Remember, this won't just be the first road game in the career of whoever lines up under center; it'll be the first game of Quarterback X's career in which he's faced a defense with a pulse at all, given that LSU's first three opponents are Appy St., Troy, and North Texas. And it will be a night game. And the crowd will be very loud indeed. And most importantly, I expect Tuberville and Rhoads will have prepared some lovely housewarming gifts to welcome him into the SEC neighborhood.
It's possible Quarterback X will handle all of this. The candidates at hand are either very well-regarded raw prospects (Lee, Jefferson) or already intimately familiar with Gary Growton's system (Hatch). The potential will be there for Quarterback X. He'll be capable of facing down the aforementioned obstacles, getting the ball into the ready hands of his dozens of stupidly talented teammates, and calmly walking out of Jordan-Hare the bayou's newest hero.
But he'll have to, because LSU will not win if Quarterback X fails. As immovable as the LSU defensive line will be, as physically gifted as the new linebackers, corners, and safety will be, the Tiger defense must replace five starters from their 2007 back seven and--in an arguably even bigger blow--shrewd coordinator Bo Pelini. If the 2007 edition of the Auburn offense could put up 24 points on the road, the 2008 edition--improved, at home, against a defense that hypothetically won't be quite as fearsome as last year's (or, at least, won't be so early in the season)--should be good for 21 points, minimum. Right? (Particularly since the sharpest teeth on the LSU D belong to a pass rush the Franklin system is designed to neutralize ... I think.) Provided Auburn's own quarterback-to-be-announced isn't a total train wreck, this won't be another 7-3 deathslog.
And so, as this incredible rivalry has taught us, it will all fall on the shoulders of Quarterback X: the season, the division, the conference, the long, long memories of every Auburn and LSU fan alive. It will all hang in the balance. The last thing I will say is this: it will be a heavy, heavy load for any player to carry, and the player carrying it will be a freshman. I wish him luck. He will need it.
Remember me? I've visited many, many places on the Interwebs listing many, many reasons to be optimistic about Auburn's upcoming campaign, and it seems a bit strange that "Brad Lester" has been one of those reasons essentially not at all.
If you'll recall, Lester had positioned himself to take over the starting job in the first few weeks of 2005 before injury struck; scored a touchdown every 11 touches in 2006 while generally looking like the most explosive back on the team; and was expected by virtually everyone to carry the Rudi-Cadillac-Ronnie-Kenny torch into 2007.
Unfortunately, six-game academic suspensions have a way of derailing that kind of career momentum, particularly when you play a position as perpetually loaded with capable replacements as "running back at Auburn." But as capable and as versatile and as hard a runner as a guy like Ben Tate is, the JCCW's hypothetical "Let's wager on who gets the starting tailback job" money remains firmly on Lester, for the very simple reasons this Charles Goldberg piece points out:
This time he doesn't have a starter like Kenny Irons in front of him, like 2006, or academics hanging over his head, like last season.
Just as importantly: the athletic promise Lester showed back in '05 and '06 is still whole and intact, as Lester proves at the 2:18 and 2:45 mark of the following (which you have seen before but should watch again):
With all due respect to Tate (who looks mighty fine in said video as well), with Mario Fannin out wide there's only one guy in Auburn's backfield with the raw talent to make tailback not just a strength but the Tigers' traditional all-league Guns-o'-the-freaking-Navarone weapon. That's Lester. He's a reason to believe. (Of course, now we'll all get to watch Tristan Davis blow up.)
Not that we should forget about Fannin, either. The transplant at receiver seems to be taking, very good news considering what else Auburn has--or doesn't have, as the case may be, based on 2007--at that position. (Pointless aside: I found the image of Fannin running around as the only guy on the entire team in shoulder pads for the first few days HI-larious. Like he's the kid with lazy eye who has to show up for the first day of third grade toting an eyepatch, or something.)
I'm not of the knee-jerk "We're better off without him" opinion; Furr by all accounts is easily an SEC-quality athlete and I don't have much doubt Auburn could have turned him into a useful (or better) safety in time. It's also not like the secondary is a stocked cupboard at this point, either. Auburn would likely be a stronger team with Furr than without.
But still--if your position coach gave you the whole of spring to prove yourself and still believed you six "longs" away from seeing the field, perhaps the more mature course of action would be to suck it up and accept that quarterback is neither going to be your D-I position nor certainly where your pro potential lies, yesno? If your choice is to to play quarterback come hell-or-high-water, fine, find a lower-division team that's interested. But going through the charade of showing up to fall practice only to dog it through drills for a day and bail the first time you get called out on it--again--just doesn't seem like an especially thoughtful approach.
Opponent watch. You can't exactly take as gospel truth the opinion of a writer who can't tell the difference between "three" and "five," but it's probably worth perusing this quickie list of reasons West Virginia is overrated anyway. In my humble opinion, however, he missed the biggest doubt of all for WVU: that not only did Rodriguez leave, but he took OC Calvin Magee with him. Ask Steve Ensminger and Hugh Nall about how easy it is to run an offense designed and orchestrated by guys who aren't around any longer, pleaseandthankyou.
Question marks regarding the offensive scheme abound at Tennesee as well, where the system being installed by new OC Dave Clawson, formerly the I-AA Richmond Spider head man, has been labeled by players as "really complicated" and "a whole lot harder than Cutcliffe's offense." Forgive me, but if I'm a Tennesee fan:
Also at RTT, Joel names Auburn one of the 29 boringest college logos, which I might take issue with if I didn't totally dig nearlyall the interlocking letter logos he J'accuses of dullness. You say tomayto, I say tomahto. And oh, speaking of the world of design, there's gotta be a better way for the Hogs to sell their new jersey than this. I mean, seriously: there's gotta be. Much as there has to be a better choice than Fran to call the Alabama-Clemson game, as Tide Druid so humorously points out.
Over the course of Tommy Tuberville's tenure as Auburn's head football coach, it's fair to say his teams have acquired certain reputations, certain easy stereotypes the common college football fan can fall back on when need be: Clock-chewing, run-first offense. Emphasis on speed yields ferocious-but-undersized defense. Smart coaching helps eliminates size deficit against bigger-name and/or bigger teams. At home, often disrupts opponents' mental approach with terrifying "Fog of Intimidation" entrance.
OK, so maybe that last one I'm just trying to give some traction on my lonesome, but the rest are out there. What's interesting about those stereotypes, though, is that when you take a cold, hard look at the numbers--when you really go inside them the way Mizzou fan the Boy does in this preseason look at the SEC West--what you find out is that ...
they, um, paint a pretty accurate picture*. To quote the Boy's "theory" as presented in his SEC East preview: In general, teams are either 1st and 3rd quarter teams or 2nd and 4th quarter teams. The 1st/3rd's are generally teams who derive advantages from gameplanning and adjustments. The 2nd/4th's are the teams with talent and athleticism that overcome you once the gameplanning is exhausted.
You can buy this or not. You can buy the Boy's dizzying array of stats and numbers--the most intriguing of which, for me, are the quarter-by-quarter breakdowns--or not. (I could try to explain some of them, but I'd suggest instead you follow the rabbit hole of links back into his previous posts and read his explanations instead. Fascinating stuff if you can handle stat wonkery at its wonkiest ... though in this case, I'll be honest, even I'm not sure I'm following him the entire time.) Regardless, the conclusions he draws fit what we would think about Auburn exactly:
Auburn's defense was terrific in the first and third quarters, but the rush defense broke down in the fourth. At the start of each half, Auburn's defensive advantages in scheme and quickness paid off handsomely, but mattered less as games progressed--hypothetically, because as the defense tired its disadvantages in size and physicality became more pronounced. (See: Mississippi St., Georgia.)
First-quarter offense played a major role in Auburn's wins. More time-of-possession early in the game would mean a fresher defense and better ability to make late-game stops. (See: Florida.)
The passing offense was terrible by-and-large, but when it performed in close games, Auburn won. If the defense could keep Evil Brandon in the game long enough, Good Brandon usually showed up by the fourth. (See: Kansas St., Arkansas.)
Looking at the overall picture, this--along with the well-founded wide receiver recruiting concerns Tubby's mentioned a dozen times--is why Tony Franklin is now your Auburn offensive coordinator.
The defenses Tubby builds are among the best-coached, most effective, just plain stingiest in the country, year after year. There are always whispers of skepticism about the size of Auburn's ends, linebackers, safeties, etc., but to suggest this is an approach that requires tinkering is to pick at the finest of nits. That said, to operate at its peak, it is an approach that requires the offense to do its part--as both common sense and the Boy's numbers tell us. 97th in the country in total offense is not doing its part. Allowing the likes of Tony Dixon to grind, grind, grind for three quarters is not doing its part--as things like a backbreaking 44-yards-all-on-the-ground touchdown drive with 5:27 to play suggest. Putting the defense in situations where it can wind up 109th in the country in fourth-quarter rush defense--in any kind of metric you choose--is not doing its part.
Which is why I have to chuckle every time I see the suggestion that the Spread Eagle will make Auburn's defense "soft." First, if there's anything out there that will successfully make BLACKMON SMASH SEN'DERRICK MARKS RAAAAWWWWR SMASH SMASH "soft," I'd love to know about it, since I'm pretty sure we can market it to parents of hyperactive children and make a bundle. Second and more importantly, as nice as BLACKMON SMASH is, it's not the Auburn defense's strength. Speed and guile are, and having everyone beat the bloody hell out of each other in practice doesn't play to that strength. Keeping the offense on the field for longer than three plays at a time, however, does.
As Tubby has said all along: hiring Franklin was good for the offense. But it was necessary for the defense.
Hooray, they've started practicing! Have they, uh, practiced anything important yet? Maybe it's just that my bloodhunger for actual football has reached the stage where a rain-delayed practice--like the cracker-with-cheese at 5:30 p.m. intended to tide you over until your 7 p.m. dinner just makes you realize you want your dinner now dammit now--feels like a wholly inadequate substitute for the real thing, but there doesn't seem to have been much of substance to come out of the Auburn's reporting day and first couple of practices. Yep, Todd and Burns are still battling to be the starter. Yep, the wideouts love them some Spread Eagle. Yep, Reggie Hunt is still floating through the NCAA Clearinghouse limbo.
That's not to say that those stories are completely lacking in import--it's nice to know Rod Smith has faith in Franklin's system, good to hear Burns say he and Todd get along, always nice to have an injury update on the likes of Tez Doolittle. The opening of fall practice also means we get a lot more worthwhile player profiles, like this one from the already-invaluable David Ching on D'Antoine Hood's sudden rise from no-name recruit to "expected freshman contributor." (Did you know he was Rod Hood's cousin? Positive sign, that.)
But the only bit of potentially capital-S Substantial news is, of course, this bizarro Deron Furr situation. As you likely know already, Furr (the allegedly freakishly athletic freshman safety-nee-quarterback) got into a dustup with the other DB's at the end of Saturday's practice, then no-showed Sunday. Ching's report that Furr spent Sunday studying for Monday's finals seems to be the best explanation going at the moment, though FWIW Auburntron's "auburn_jenks" used his first-ever post at the site to rumormonger to opposite (i.e. "he's gone") effect. The guess here: this all blows over in a few days, and by next week when we all get together for a pint or five at the local pub we'll have a good hearty chuckle through our beards about it.
One other link related to practice you should probably take a gander at is WRAS's on-site report, which I appreciate for reinforcing my belief (backed up elsewhere with glowing reports regarding Zac Etheridge) that the Auburn secondary, if healthy, will be one of the best in the SEC. (I also appreciated knowing that Lee Ziemba is wearing a Sasha Vujacic-type headband. Sweet.)
UPDATE: Naturally, not more than a couple hours after I post that "if healthy" bit without tossing a pinch of salt over my shoulder, Savage got carted off with what could be anything from a torn ACL to nothing. Hooray. Nothing like the thinnest position on the team getting dealt the first injury blow of the year.
Also making yours truly's crystal ball look even cloudier than usual was Tubby's rather obvious ... uh ... dissatisfaction with the Furr situation, which you can see for your own self at the 50-second mark of this OA-News video. You can also see that at the end of a hot practice, Auburn coach Tommy Tubberville enjoys the cool, crisp taste of Gatorade.
Backlash.As mentioned previously, even the JCCW was a bit taken aback when the media not only picked Auburn to take the SEC West but did so by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Not surprisingly, that choice has raised a feweyebrows across the SEC bloggitysphere, for which I can't exactly blame anyone: if there's any on-paper margin at all between LSU and Auburn, it's thinner than piano wire. (SMQ essentially took LSU over Auburn this week, too.)
Of course, while there are good reasons out there to back LSU, the factors in Auburn's favor aren't exactly spun out of cotton candy and gossamer daydreams, either; they're obvious enough they even get covered here, and if we're talking specifically about the media vote, it's worth noting that simple not-them-again LSU fatigue probably has as much to do with the margin as, say, the relative quarterback situations. For argument's sake, though, here's three more quick reasons past the J-Hare/no-more-Cox/no-more-Flynn knee-jerk stuff to take Auburn in the preseason biggest SEC West game of the year:
1. No special teams deficit. LSU took both the 2007 and 2005 meetings after disastrous Auburn breakdowns on special teams (a punt return in '05, Byrum's three-yard pooch kickoff last year). As explosive as Trindon Holliday is and as generally reliable as Colt David has become, a healthy trio of Tristan Davis, Byrum, and Shoemaker should mean that even if Auburn doesn't have a ST advantage, they won't have a disadvantage, either.
2. Luck. Miles's game-winning deep toss was the right call, but it doesn't change the fact that an incompletion followed by a David miss was almost as likely an outcome as what happened. If there are to be breaks--and this series seems to hinge on them more than any other I can think of--it's Auburn's turn to get them.
3. LSU's pre-Auburn schedule won't help them. Appalachian St. has the name, they're almost certainly better than LSU Week 3 opponent North Texas, and they're likely just about as good as Week 2 foe Troy--but there's no way facing the Mountaineers, Trojans, or Mean Green will be a substitute for taking on Auburn on the road, who'll have already tangled with Southern Miss and Miss. St. by then. It may give LSU more or an opportunity to scout ahead, but overall I think this is advantage AU.
Of course, if you don't like all this fancy analysis stuff, you could turn towards Alabama's most preeminent sportswriter and learn that Auburn will beat LSU because it's an even-numbered year.
The PPP steams along. If you haven't clicked over recently, the Paperless Preview Project has been updated a few times since its debut and will be so again first thing tomorrow morning to include CFN's surprisingly sagacious look at Auburn. (How many national commentators would realize the secondary was better than the pass rush?) Already available at the PPP is Auburn's Rivals preview and of course dozens and dozens of other preview links. Please continue to enjoy.
I've spent a good chunk of this morning digging around YouTube and a handful of other video sites, searching for the right combination of search terms that would unlock one of two particular clips involving Skip Caray, the beloved Braves broadcaster who died in his sleep Sunday. I often see the word "beloved" tossed around in various tributes to public figures and sometimes wonder how "beloved," say, the local district attorney really was; in Caray's case, though, I know it's appropriate because I for one loved the hell out of him. No one I've heard was ever better at baseball. I'm not sure anyone I've heard has been better at any sport.
The clips I haven't been able to find would show why. The first was a staple of various baseball blooper specials or those "Not-So-Great Moments in Sports"-style videos that every kid I knew had three of. In it, the hapless early-80s Braves are facing the Giants on TBS, back at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Jeffrey Leonard is at the plate for the Giants, one out, runner on first, top of the ninth, Braves ahead. As Leonard approaches, Caray reads off a promo for whatever movie TBS had reeled up to follow the game. Leonard stands in as Caray says "And we'll get you to that just as soon as Leonard hits into a 6-4-3 double play." Pitch. Grounder to short. "6," Caray says, as the ball is scooped and flipped to second. "4. 3!" Game over. And as best I recall--and I may be manufacturing this last bit wholecloth, but what if I am? Some of our idols deserve this sort of treatment--neither Caray nor his partner (safe to assume it was one of Ernie Johnson or Pete Van Wieren) make any nod to Skip's little crystal-ball moment. They just get on with the details of the Braves' record, the winning pitcher, the "X-runs, X-hits, X-errors" minutiae of the box score.
The whole thing lasts about 20 seconds or so. But it's everything that made Caray great in a nutshell: the professionalism that was never robotic, the humor that never drew undue attention to itself, the intuition about the game, that subtle love for his and my baseball team that never (well, rarely) blossomed into outright homerism.
On that last part, Caray could be forgiven, I think, in the early '90s, when the same Braves that had been Hammerin' Hank, Dale Murphy, and a collection of bad jokes for the better part of 20 years became the most consistent club in American sports virtually overnight. There were days late in the 1991 pennant race when those of us who had spent our formative years squirreling away Gerald Perry cards and practicing the Gene Garber windup in the backyard could read the NL West standings and feel like we'd dropped into some parallel universe we'd be whisked away from at any moment. When Brian Hunter popped up with the bases loaded to bring Frankie Cabrera (Francisco freaking Cabrera! It's been 16 years, and I still can't believe it) to the plate with two outs and the Pirates up a run in Game 7 of the '92 NLCS, the wormhole that would bring us all back the Braves' old 100-loss reality seemed to be closer than ever.
Then, of course, Cabrera singled, Bream ran the fastest 90 feet of his entire molasses-paced life, and you know the rest. I wish like hell I'd been listening to Skip at the time; my Dad and I discussed muting the TV and clicking on the radio (as we did for Auburn's road games to listen to Jim Fyffe), but we worried about a lag and got Sean McDonough's TV call (weirdly available 15 seconds in here) instead. McDonough did a fine job, but there was still a sharp pang of regret when I heard Skip's call on SportsCenter the next day: his "Braves win! Braves win! Braves win!" had an edge that went far beyond simply telling the listener the good news--it was the voice of our collective amazement. Skip was telling us the wormhole was still closed, that he was as stunned as the rest of us that this star-crossed, snake-bitten baseball team would play for a world championship for a second year in a row.
Braves win. It didn't make any sense. Baseball usually does, and that's how Skip Caray called it, brilliantly, day-in and day-out for as long as I've been alive. But I thank him, now and years from now, for recognizing that singular moment in which the Braves and sense weren't even sharing the same galaxy.
It's not embeddable, but you can hear Skip's call of Bream coming home at the end of a brief tribute clip here. If you have the slightest drop of Braves fandom in your blood, I suggest you listen.
As you may have noticed, USA Today released the coaches' preseason top 25 today, despite the tiny, irrelevant, fact-of-no-import that said coaches' teams haven't even set foot on the practice field yet. Maybe they're making sure they have enough time to get their Christmas decorations up by Halloween.
Anyways: as expected, Auburn managed the feat of simultaneously being either greatly respected--11th out of 120 teams ain't shabby!--or baldly disrespected--fourth in the SEC and five places below an LSU team with even bigger quarterback issues than us?--depending on whether you prefer your viewing lens nationally or regionally tinted. Me? Like all Auburn fans, whichever one keeps the preseason spotlight on someone else, of course. (The latter, in other words.)
Frankly, it's exactly what Auburn both deserved and desired--deserved in the sense that a team with an unsettled QB situation isn't going to rank above either of the two East powers or the defending national champion even when a case can be made for Auburn being the West favorite; desired in the sense that the Tigers have the poll position to drop a game somewhere and still have the juice to land a BCS berth* if the cards fall right, but are low enough that Tubby can nonetheless play the "Doesn't matter what the media back home think, 'cause no one else believes you'll win this league" card. There are no complaints on this end.
One last aside: In a sense, the preseason polls have pitted the national media against the SEC locals. The nation takes Georgia and LSU for the SEC title game; the SEC guys have Auburn and Florida. A bit of discussion on this disagreement from the Eastern side of things, if you like, is available here and here.
I apologize for that subject line. I offer you Q. Groves torching poor, poor Alesana Alesana in last year's K-State game as compensation, because you probably didn't realize you needed to watch it again:
Fixing what's broken. It would be a pleasant and comforting thing if the 2007 Auburn offense had just one major problem, a single Achilles heel that Tony Franklin could fixate on and remedy, thus producing overnight (well, over-offseason) the 2004esque Platonic ideal of Auburn Offense.
Unfortunately, an offense doesn't sink all the way to 97th in the country without taking on water in more than a few areas, and it won't surprise anyone that one of the great big gushing leaks for Auburn last year was pass protection. In a typically excellent bit of wonkery, RBR's OTS showed this week exactly how deep the problem ran with this post on SEC sacks-per-pass-attempt. The numbers coldly confirm what Auburn fans would have guessed without them: Cox got hauled down at the kind of rate usually reserved for the statues of deposed iron-fisted dictators. (uh ... zing?) Only Ole Miss was worse. OTS summarizes:
[I]t was to be expected. Brandon Cox held onto the ball too long, and had all of the mobility of a piece of Civil War era artillery. Combine that with true freshmen starting on the offensive line, and it's a formula for a very high ASR.
Here's the two pieces of good news: first, despite Groves's general ineffectiveness over the last half of the season, Auburn still posted a decent finish in this metric on the other side of the ball. More to the point, at this stage it doesn't appear the 2008 Auburn offense's pass protection numbers are going to have even a passing resemblance to the 2007 version's. Like, people who see them out together are going to wonder if their Mom got busy with the milkman, and stuff.
For starters, the mewling babes that began last season on the offensive have grown into grizzled (i.e. "possessing the qualities, viz. size and strength of, the grizzly bear") veterans who get their due bit of fluffery here. There's another decent quickie o-line overview here, which points out that after a regular season of Auburn's QB's going down once every 12 dropbacks or so, the Tigers allowed a single Chick-Fil-A Bowl sack on 44 different pass attempts.
Some of that is the line improving, yes, but a swing that large also of course has to be attributed to Franklin calling plays that don't ask a skittish and less-than-100-percent-at-all-times quarterback with the footspeed God gave the three-toed sloth to make a five-step drop. His philosophy's not one that lends itself to big negative plays, and particularly with Shifty McShifterson Burns at the helm, it looks quite safe to me to say we're not going to see many sacks this fall.
True, we might not see many 45-yard bombs or breakaway touchdown runs down the sideline, either. But after spending the better part of two entire seasons expecting to lose seven yards every time our quarterback drops back, I'm not complaining.
As for those other issues ... The Countdown-to-Kickoff slipping under a month seems to have roused Will from his summer slumber, always a good thing when it means posts like this one on the ongoing evacuation of the rubble of the newspaper industry. Even better is this look at the Borges-to-Franklin transition, and why the previous regime failed. His answer--as the breathless TV announcer says--may surprise you:
While it's reasonable to think some of the difference was due to the natural progression of defensive coaches on the other teams getting more familiar with Borges's schemes, I think it's clear that losing Anthony Mix, Devin Aromashodu and Ben Obiwankenobi after '05 and Courtney Taylor after '06 was what really spelled doom for the Gulf Coast Offense.
Will is persuasive as always; I cosign and encourage you to read the rest, though I'll cop to being more optimistic about the Spread Eagle than I believe Will to be.
That said, that optimism wasn't helped by the same (rather excellent) Tony Barnhart Q-n-A with Franklin that Will seemed to find encouraging, principally because any time an Auburn OC says they'll "throw first and run second" I break out in hives. Here's to hoping that first throw is a hitch to Super Mario Fannin. (And oh, while we're sorta discussing Barnhart, I'd also recommend his piece on his visit to Troy.)
Jeff Lebo Firing Watch now at: 212 days. That's assuming a season-ending Auburn loss on the first day of the SEC tournament, which opens March 12, and that Jacobs doesn't prolong the inevitable by more than a day.
Sure, it's a little premature, and probably a bit cruel. But after Lebo couldn't even keep arguably his best player motivated enough to meet what's likely the team's most basic requirements, does anyone not immediately involved with the team see anything other than another hardscrabble 14-17 season this winter? Is there any way we're not headed for talk from both sides at its end about it being "best for Auburn to move in a new direction"?
I don't have anything against Lebo and I'll be delighted if he somewhow pulls an NCAA Tournament season out of a magic hat he's been hiding for the last few years. But it's simply an out-and-out falsehood to claim he's done anything more with the mess he inherited than push it into the corners of the room. It's still there. We can still see it. And it's too bad, but particularly by the end of next season, he'll have had enough time to get it clean.
Auburn-related material you should read. 1. My expectation that Bo Harris won't be too dearly missed seems to be backed up by Charles Goldberg's look at the linebacking depth chart, where your second string consists of a well-respected senior (Harden), a sophomore who basically everyone expects the proverbial "big things" out of (Bynes), and Merrill Johnson. Now if they'll just stay healthy, knock on Yellawood. 2. Summer updates on the quarterbacks shouldn't be the least bit enlightening--what have they done other than throw 7-on-7 drills since the spring?--but I thought Jay Tate's looks at Burns and Todd were worthwhile anyway. 3. Great work by the Auburn sports info department in putting together this page on Auburn-affiliated Olympians. To answer the Auburner's question, though, country comes first, and it's not close. It'll be sweet if Margaret Hoelzer fends off Kirsty Coventry for the gold in the 200 backstroke, but it'll be even sweeter if somehow the USA sweeps the event, Coventry's orange-and-blue roots notwithstanding.
SEC-related material you should read. 1. The National Championship Issue produces another sterling heavy-on-the-numbers research post, this time focusing on which conferences feature the most top-to-bottom parity and showing the SEC doesn't live up to the old "anyone can beat anyone" saw as often as we might think. C'est la vie. 2. If you haven't heard, the Raycom-nee-Lincoln Financial-nee-Jefferson-Pilot telecasts will now be in HD, with the RazorBloggers also pointing us towards Clay Travis's entertaining response. As someone who'll get their 12:30 kickoff fix via the "magic" of ESPN GamePlan, I'm not yet certain those beautiful high definition images of Bobby Johnson will actually find their way through all the various satellites and cables and digital hoo-ha to my TV, but I've got my fingers crossed. And hey, speaking of Johnson, 3. he said the 2008 Vandy offensive line with zero returning starters will be better than the 2007 line with five returning starters and a first-round NFL draft pick. Whatever you say, Bobby. 4. Rocky Top Talk has a neat little series on the single wing and how it might be applied to the Vols.
Studies show the rate of Haterade consumption to be up to 37 percent higher in the SEC over other conferences.
So the boys at ESPN recently decided to celebrate their newfangled bloggitysphere foray with a conference-by-conference examination of capital-H Hate, with Chris Low doing the SEC honors. Won't argue too terrible much with his Hate-o-meter measurements (though how he believes more people hate Ole Miss than Auburn or Arkansas, I'm not sure), but I think Low loses a touch of credibility when he lists LSU-Alabama as a more bitter rivalry than Florida-Tennessee. Sure, the whole Saban-deserts-the-coonasses vs. Miles-loves-crackin'-on-f'ing-Alabama angle is nice and sharp at the moment, but that'll likely wear off in a few seasons and historically there's not a lot of beef there that I'm aware of; meanwhile, the Gators and Vols have been at each other's throats since the day the SEC East was formed and are still more-than-willing to, say, make public high-risk wagers of a personal nature over the outcome. Spurrier will see every one of Miles's 'Bama quotes and still have the room to raise with the classic "Citrus without UT" diss, the single coldest one I can remember coming out of the mouth of an SEC coach.
That's sorta beside the point, though, which was that ESPN's hate-a-thon got people talkin' and that one of those people was Jay, who listed his own top-10 Most Hated and encouraged others to do the same. As it seems like the sort of good pointless fun we have to rely on to pass the slow painful days 'til kickoff and it might be nice to have a second Auburn Blogger perspective, I figure I can give it a whirl:
1. Alabama. Obvs.
2. Alabama. Equally obvs. Honesty would probably require me to list them at 3. and 4. too, at least, but it wouldn't make for terribly interesting reading, so instead we'll go with ...
3. LSU. That Miles's shameless pandering and general crazed Ringmastering has gone over so well on the Bayou says an awful lot, to me, about the wild-eyed, beer-tossin', chest-thumpin' F you nature of much of the Tiger fanbase. That Auburn could have been in Birmingham/Atlanta a half-dozen more times if LSU hadn't stood in the damn way doesn't exactly warm me to them, either.
4. Arkansas. I've much preferred Nutt's brand of crazy to Miles's, but a) a select few of Nutt's Hogs *cough* Tony Bua *cough* were some of the dirtiest SEC players I can remember b) I've seen enough 57-yards-for-a-TD Razorback runs in the midst of a 25-point upset beatdown in Jordan-Hare to last me multiple lifetimes c) Bobby freaking Petrino, man.
6. Tennessee. Would qualify for this list on the strength of "Rocky Top" alone.
7. Georgia. I know, I know, they're supposed to be higher up the list--just ask Kyle--but I think of the Oldest Rivalry more as a battle of equals who simply want the respect that comes with beating another good team, rather than an Iron Bowl-style bloodfeud or a pedestal-toppling Gator hunt. Of course, after the last two seasons, I want this year's edition as badly as I want any game that isn't in Tuscaloosa or doesn't have a team in purple on the opposite sideline.
8. Oklahoma. I blame the whole crooked two-holes-three-pegs system for 2004, but that doesn't mean I'll ever forgive the Sooners for snatching victory from defeat what seemed like every damn week that fall, and then laying the king of all eggs against USC. Screw 'em forever.
9. Mississippi St. Would have ranked much higher in the days of Jackie Sherrill, but even with Croom at the helm there's still the matter of those damn cowbells.
10. Ohio St. Not for making the national title game out of the, ahem, quality-challenged Big 10 two years in a row--I'd like to thank them for that, actually, as it's ensured a repeat of 2004 has become much less likely for any SEC team--but for Kirk Herbstreit's attempts to hide his pathetically obvious bias, for and Brent Musberger's willingness to have Laurinaitis's baby, for ESPN's countdown clock to the 2006 OSU-Michigan game ... for just basically the media's panting desire to worship all things Scarlet-and-Gray ever since their absurdly lucky title run in 2002. That might have been the best part about LSU's win last January--Buckeye fever finally seems to have cooled off a bit.
Bear in mind I don't think I work myself into a lather over a given team that isn't the Tide as often as some fans do, so we're talking about a given level of "hate." Even when it comes to LSU, I can readily admit there are tons of good Tiger fans out there or that, for instance, for all of Miles's public silliness happen his decision to throw into the end zone last year was a brilliant one. In short, I'd like to think the "hate" from No. 3 on down this list isn't quite blinding. (I would, of course, give up certain internal organs for an Auburn victory against Nos. 1 and 2. Spleen, schmeen.)
Tomorrow, however, is August. It means it's time to start taking the glorious and long-awaited arrival of college football seriously. And taking it seriously means putting aside our willingness to put aside our differences, and instead find a reason why any team who opposes Auburn this year deserves a loss so humiliating their head coach would call his midnight arrest for indecent exposure in a truck stop bathroom "not so embarrassing, when you think about it." There's 30 days to go. It's time to feel the hate.
This series of near-substanceless, air-injected preview puffery should in no way be mistaken for actual preseason football nutrition. Nonetheless, the hope is that you will find the series unaccountably tasty and even habit-forming, and as such it is unofficially sponsored by:
Since its inception two-and-a-half years ago, this blog has been chock-ful o' mistakes, errors, gaffes, blunders, inaccuracies, typos, omissions, foul-ups, slip-ups, mess-ups, and good old-fashioned screw-ups. But for me at least, two of them stand out as particularly unfortunate ... missteps.
First, I committed perhaps the single most unforgivable crime in the indie hipster guidebook, referring to Virginia-born Neko Case as a Canadian. She's not; she just plays one on stage. I could have freaking told you her first album was "The Virginian." I must have been drunk.
The second one's actually a little bit worse from the standpoint of this being a blog about, you know, college football. Stealing Borrowing a projection taxonomy from last year's Mgo previews, I labeled last year's game against Mississippi St. an "auto-win" for Auburn. Yep, auto-win.
That didn't work out so well. (After seeing certain events ... uh ... transpire in the execution of Michigan's season, it's my guess that taxonomy is cursed. Consider yourself warned, Black Shoe Diaries.) So it's with considerable trepidation that I venture forth into this year's look at Sly Croom's Bulldogs, who have proven rather definitively over the past two seasons that it might be amusing to think of them as an automatic win, but it won't make you look very smart.
Last year: The dispiriting losses to the likes of Maine that kicked off Croom's tenure seemed a pretty distant memory by the end of the 2007 campaign, which included defense-and-turnover-fueled road wins over Auburn and Kentucky, a second straight upset of the Tide, a near-miraculous (and very much Orgeron-aided) victory in the Egg Bowl, and finally the Bulldogs' first bowl win in seven years. Considering that anything worse than 6-6 would have almost certainly seen Croom get the boot and the rebuilding process started all over again, I don't think anyone begrudged State or its fans a celebration perhaps a little more enthusiastic than an 8-5 record would usually dictate.
Meanwhile, behind a frightfully green-but-improving offensive line, Auburn rebounded from early upset losses to South Florida and Mississippi St. to upset top-five Florida on the road, take eventual national champion LSU to the wire, and stretch their school-record Iron Bowl winning streak to six on their way to a satisfying 9-4 final record.
Notable previous meeting*: Late in Auburn's 42-14 rout of the Bulldogs in 2002, Tommy Tuberville called for a fake field goal which Damon Duval successfully ran in for what the home Bulldog supporters--and more importantly, State head coach Jackie Sherrill--felt was an unnecessary and humiliating touchdown. (Tuberville would later explain he didn't want to risk a potential blocked kick that could bring State back into the ballgame. FWIW.) The proud and wounded Sherrill unsurprisingly held the resulting grudge against Tuberville into the following season, when he not-so-coincidentally announced with less than 48 hours to go before the Bulldogs took the field at Jordan-Hare that he would retire at the end of the campaign.
Less widely known, however, is that Sherrill's desire for revenge drove him to use more than one last-ditch motivational ploy for his 1-5, 21-point underdog Bulldogs--the second carrying echoes of the legendary "castration" episode before Sherrill's 28-10 upset of Texas in 1992. At the final team meeting before the Bulldogs left for Auburn, after revealing that he would be retiring at year's end, Sherrill also produced and unrolled a full-size, authentic tiger pelt. Sherrill told his team that thanks to an arrangement he'd made with an exotic animals dealer from southwest Louisiana, if they could come back from Auburn with a win over Tuberville's bunch, he would give each player on the team a Sharpie and a chance to autograph the pelt. The pelt would then hang in the State weight room, Sherrill promised, as a reminder to future Bulldog squads of what they could accomplish if they worked together, of what happened to other teams who came into Starkville and dared to embarrass the home team.
Given the difficulty of keeping a trophy of that size (and, hypothetically, notoriety) a secret from local authorities while hanging it in such a high-traffic area as the State training facility, it is debatable whether Sherrill actually intended to keep that particular promise in the event of a Bulldog victory, or even if the players would have had the chance to sign the pelt in the first place. It became a moot point in the end, as State showed little fight in response to Sherrill's various motivational tactics and Auburn trounced the Bulldogs 45-13. The pelt was, allegedly, later surreptitiously returned to the dealer, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in May 2006.
Actual series history: Auburn leads the all-time series 56-23-2. State's 2007 victory snapped a six-game Auburn win streak in the series and a five-year run of Tiger dominance that saw the Bulldogs lose by an average of 30.2 points from 2002 to 2006. The Bulldogs did put together a four-game streak of their own from '97 through 2000, so State doesn't have to reach too far into the past for reasons to believe last year's win could be the start of a trend.
Causes for Alarm
1. It took a good long while, but poor Michael Henig finally took the seemingly endless series of "Hey, maybe it's just me, but you probably ought to be more intensely pursuing a career outside of professional football" hints from Fate and will no longer even theoretically be under center for the Bulldogs this year. Taking his place is sophomore Wesley Carroll, who started the final seven games of 2007 but didn't manage to give the world so much as a mild Indian burn, much less set it on fire.
Nonetheless, entering 2008 with a quarterback who didn't drop a mirror into a stack of salt shakers while dashing through the Ladder Room at the black cat sanctuary has to be a plus. Carroll might not bring much to the table, but to judge from last season at least the table won't mysteriously collapse when he sits down.
2. There's no room in which to debate this: State's 2007 season was every bit as blissfully fortunate as Michael Henig's career was bitterly unlucky. They were outgained by a league-worst 73 yards a game in SEC play; their offense was every single bit as toothless as the previous train wrecks of the Croom era; they went 4-0 in one-possession games, a number that doesn't even include a Kentucky game in which the Wildcats turned it over six times; their Pythagorean numbers fell out of the proverbial ugly tree and if they didn't strike every branch on the way down--that honor's reserved for Tennesee's--they struck a goodly number nonetheless. If we might say Henig was snakebitten, every other Bulldog last year was unicornbitten.
And yet: would anyone not a hidebound Rebel fan say Sylvester Croom didn't deserve every single shred of luck that came his way? With any other coach, I'd fully expect the pendulum to swing the other way in 2008; with Croom, I wouldn't put it past karma to give him a second straight year of nonstop four-leaf clovers and purple horseshoes just for the hell of it.
Causes for Confidence
1. In the 2007 meeting between the Tigers and Bulldogs Auburn a) threw interceptions on its first two pass attempts of the game b) allowed one of those interceptions to be returned for a touchdown c) fumbled its third possession away inside the State 25 d) drove 60 yards to open the second half before fumbling the ball away inside the State 20 e) never scored in the second half f) allowed a punt to roll 73 yards to the Auburn 11 in a game in which field position was obviously paramount g) followed the punt with an interception inside Auburn territory two plays later h) allowed a State offense that would finish 5-18 in the air to cover 44 yards by rushing the ball 10 consecutive times i) allowed same State offense to score a touchdown, thereby forcing Auburn to score their own touchdown to win.
My point is this: that was Auburn's shakiest team of the last few years playing their shakiest game of the season. They were facing State's strongest team of the past few years, at least record-wise, playing (if not over their heads) fairly well. Competently, at the minimum. And still Auburn finished the game nine yards away from victory.
From this Auburn Blogger's perspective, you have to be a little confident about the Tigers' chances if every single thing that could go wrong doesn't go wrong this time around.
2. Part of me thinks that it's only natural to start talking about the SEC title and a BCS berth once you've taken that first "make a bowl/have a winning record" step. Particularly internally--of course you want your kids shooting for the moon and winding up amongst the stars, as the Senior Quotes of like 12 different people in my high school yearbook would tell you.
But part of me thinks that as much as I like Croom, blabbing about those goals to the press seems like putting the cart a little bit before the "Why don't we see if we can average more than 297 yards a game on offense and complete more than 50.5 percent of our passes" horse. And with La. Tech and Southeast Louisiana on the Bulldogs' schedule their first two weeks, the first team with the chance to make that little point would be ... Auburn.
Actual alleged analysis: There are reasons to be optimistic about State. Even after the post-spring departure of top OL Mike Brown, with Carroll providing some modicum of stability at quarterback and Dixon still around to stubbornly push the pile forward for three-and-a-half a carry, it seems impossible the Bulldog offense could still be so utterly anemic after five years of Croom's tutelage. Sure, DC Ellis Johnson is gone, but defense has never been the Bulldogs' issue under Croom and they return a whopping nine starters on that side of the ball. One of those is the terrifying Derek Pegues, liable to snap his fingers and put six points on the board at any time, whether he's picking off passes or returning kicks.
And for all of that, I can't ignore the avalanche of stats that say: They were the same old Bulldogs. Just luckier. Without Brown, top DE Titus Brown, and Johnson, I can't help but think that even given the across-the-board talent upgrades they're still going to be, more-or-less, the same old Bulldogs once again.
If they are, that five-year run of obliteration entering 2007 would suggest Auburn beatdowns are the norm for this series for the time being--and that after last year's fluke, we'll be returning to it. A loss like that just can't happen again, can it?
I get the feeling that that's exactly what the overwhelming majority of Tide fans were telling themselves at this time last year. State has too much going for it for them not to upset somebody. If Auburn doesn't take care of the ball, force Carroll to throw, and seize its opportunities against a defense with too much experience and too much pride to regress to Average, it very well could wind up being them.
*For any talk radio types wondering about the "truth" of this "Notable previous meeting" entry is encouraged to look back over the previous examples in this series and the word "actual" that follows. Disclaimers probably aren't necessary, but I'd rather not have anything like this happen, kthx.
It's not that I don't thoroughly appreciate the efforts of the intrepid Orspencerson Shwallindle to provide us with gems like the one above or this pic of Tubby looking every bit as Awesome as we'd want him to, but I'm sorta with Todd on this one: the way to get an interesting quote is generally to get a coach or athlete one-on-one in their comfort zone alongside a field or amongst the welcoming motivational posters of their office, not in the middle of a three-ring extravaganza packed with camera lights and microphone bouquets. What Media Days usually winds up giving us is substanceless tripe like this piece from Ray Melick, which somehow posits boredom as Tubby's motivation for firing Borges as opposed to the fact his "not broken" offense ranked 97th-best in D-I.
Media Days is the college football equivalent of Thanksgiving when you're 9: it's nice to have everyone together in one place and all, but the best part is knowing that as soon as it's over, it's time to start thinking seriously about what kind of goodies we're going to get if we can just hold on for one more month.
Not that Media Days don't have their uses, mind you. Tubby's meeting with the Auburn beat writers produced several intriguingtidbits, five of which I'll rank here in order of most to least important:
1. Tez Doolittle will be good to go. Between Coleman, Carter, Gray, and who knows what other terrors Tubby always seems to be hiding at DE, I'm not worried about Auburn's ends. With Marks at one tackle, I'm not worried about that spot either. The other one? I'm sure Jake Ricks is solid, sure Zach Clayton and Mike Blanc deserve their shot. But I feel a lot better about it knowing a colossal, extra-motivated 10th-year senior like Doolittle will be around to plug that hole if it needs plugging.
2. Tristan Davis is healthy. A massive upgrade at special teams if this holds.
3. Ryan Williams is in the doghouse; freshman CB's should see major time. These two items are probably related. Can't see it as a major, major issue as long as Savage, Powers, and McFadden are all healthy, but if they're not, we know we won't have a lot of experience to call on. 4. Chaz Ramsey may redshirt. Funny how headed into last year the loss of a returning starter on the o-line would have been cause for all sorts of alarm sirens, but this year ... well, losing Ramsey would be a blow, no question. But Auburn's second unit currently features Byron Isom, Mike Berry, Bart Eddins, and Andrew McCain. Methinks Hugh Nall can get at least one of those guys ready to hold the line if need be.
5. Bo Harris is among the dearly departed. Eh, whatever; I'm sure Harris had potential (though calling him one of AU's "top linebackers" when he finished the spring on the third team is a stretch), but after Chris Evans's emergence I'm more convinced than ever Tubby keeps a linebacker tree in his back yard.
The other "news" to leak out from Tubby's/Bosley's/Marks's appearances I think we either knew already (Fannin will be ready, Burns has the inside track but isn't the starter yet) or is kinda neat but ultimately meaningless (the practice-measured-by-plays-not-time thing, the Saban quote in the Tiger weight room). Some of Marks's comments on Georgia are intriguing, though. Transcripts of Tubby's comments both pre- and in-podium available here and here.
Elsewhere at Media Days ... Cocknfire and his blue-eyed anime Doom Rooster at Garnet and Black Attack were pretty well killing things at the Wynfrey. My favorite post to come out of his stay was this one on Saban and the looming anger in the crimson fanbase should the Tide again fail to rise above mediocrity, cleverly portrayed thusly:
Most interesting, though, was C&F's highlighting of Saban's take on Clemson:
I think what it's going to help us do is enhance our development in terms of our identity as a team because it will certainly show us where we are in terms of how we compete against one of the best teams in the country, even though it's a first game and it's on the road.
C&F's oh-snap response? Translation: Alabama will begin the season 0-1. And I'm not sure you can argue much with that assessment: what are the references to "one of the best teams in the country," "first game," and "on the road" in this context if not preemptive excuses? True, they wouldn't be if Saban was expressing his confidence that his team would overcome those obstacles and prove themselves the equal of Cousin Clem ... but he's portraying Bowden's bunch not as a potential victim but as a measuring stick. I've talked to enough outmanned high school coaches who have said, almost verbatim, things like "where we are in terms of how we compete" to recognize it for what it is: the language of defeat. If you're talking about "development" instead of wins, you're talking about losses.
Now, I have no doubt whatsoever that privately, Saban has all the confidence in the world his team will head to Atlanta and whip Clemson so badly they'll look purple even without the uniforms. The point, as C&F concludes, is to keep those sharp-toothed expectations in check just in case the Tide don't, in fact, pull the W out. It makes sense, sure.
But I have to ask: if I'm a Tide player or Tide fan, wouldn't I rather have my coach offering the press reasons our team will win as opposed to reasons it won't matter if they don't?
You would think images like this one would have endeared the Buckeyes to SEC fans.
